Review Detail

The cover and concept of this book was the first thing to catch my attention. The cover reminded me a bit of The Flash, and having the word Speed right there also helped my mind make the leap. The concept sounded really interesting: Tetra, a drug to make you super-human but only for nine minutes and a girl wanting to track down all the users because one of them hurt her brother. And an undercover mission. It definitely had a lot of potential.

The main character, Alana, was someone I found easy to relate to with her determination to rid the streets of the thing that hurt her brother and her guilt that he’d been hurt while with her. I have siblings, I understood her. I also liked her competitiveness to be the best runner on the task force. The things I liked about her the most were the little things, things like wanting to make sure no civilians were injured while she was running on Tetra or not wanting her little brother looking up news about her arrests on the internet. She worried that she would end up like some of the past runners who’d been hit hard by the side effects and what the future would hold for her when she couldn’t take Tetra anymore.

I liked that the book didn’t shy away from the drug being addictive. The rush it gave its users, the feeling of being so alive, was so addicting and Alana wasn’t an exception. It was a struggle for her and it was hard to see her justify her need for the drug. Her good intentions to find the dealers to get the drug off the streets didn’t stop her from getting just as addicted to the rush as the criminals.

There was a lot of action and it was fast-paced action. The romance was light, mostly in the background, and stayed pretty undeveloped in terms of falling in love. It was more ‘I like you, we could be something, but there’s so much other stuff going on right now so let’s see where this attraction and kissing takes us’. It focused more on the action, the character development for Alana, and undercover mission to take down the main source of Tetra. There were only a few times when I felt like things were moving too fast to keep up and it meant re-reading a few pages to make sure I fully understood what was happening.

Overall, it was an exciting book and so much action was packed into this standalone.